According to a report on local radio station, 970 WFLA, Clearwater High School is going to do away with conventional textbooks next school year.
Clearwater High School is planning to switch to paper-free, electronic books called e-readers next year. The devices will replace books completely with electronic devices that will be preloaded with the required subjects’ texts for students.
According to reports, the school of about 2,100 students hasn’t yet decided on a vendor for the deal, but is discussing the matter with Amazon Kindle.
The transition to textbooks on e-readers seems inevitable to me. It’s just a matter of time.
I expected the transition would have started in colleges where the cost of books for one semester usually exceeds the price of Kindle ($259) and sometimes even that of an iPad ($499). Plus college students could make the choice individually to go electronic or not, as opposed to a high school which has to go through the bureaucracy of a government purchasing office.
Never the less, this is a pretty cool technological step forward in schools. It’ll be interesting to see how it works. Is the school going to buy every student an e-reader? What will happen if a student breaks or loses it?
We have quite a few students, teachers, college professors, and school administrators who read Christian Web Trends. Is your school considering switching to e-readers? What do you think of the idea?
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6 Comments
Interesting, my wife (who teaches third grade) and I were just discussing the possibility of classes switching to an iPad or something similar. In addition to putting the books on to read, we were talking about the possible applications for use of video and internet searches as well as testing and homework. Imaging not having to grade half the tests and homework because the software does it for you. And with the ability some have for using a stylus, you could even have writing or working out problems for math. The possibilities seem endless. It's exciting to see a school actually making the switch.
Some friends and I were also recently discussing this very topic. I think this is an obvious niche for the iPad. Not only can it be used for ebooks but for creating and sharing content in other ways — that's a major advantage of the iPad over something like the Kindle. The disadvantage of using a Kindle/iPad/etc in elementary and high schools is that books are reused for several years. Depending on how licensing agreements are negotiated, the cost might be prohibitive. However, on the university level, where students have to buy books each year, it makes great sense to me. Some tech advances need to take place: easy annotation and note-taking and licensing that allows the sale of used ebooks at the end of a semester are the two that come to mind immediately.
hmmm,
I like the idea because interaction with the content (that you are supposed to be studying) means that you can write notes and collate similar content for summary. And not loose your notes. Well, I am not talking from experience here.
but I, personally, would find it hard to study; too easy to access the network for fun. And I prefer the tactile feel of a textbook, it gives me a sense of ownership of the content. Besides looking good on my shelf.
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